By cracking down on dissident lawmakers and stripping them of committee assignments, Gov. Bobby Jindal is actually freeing them to publicly question his priorities.
By Jeremy Alford
Gisclair’s seat mate on the House floor is Rep. Harold Ritchie, D-Bogalusa, who lost his position as vice chairman of the House Insurance Committee. It was on a Tuesday that Ritchie voted against a Jindal-backed bill that creates a tax rebate for donations to nonprofits that support grants or scholarships for private schools.
By Wednesday, House Speaker Chuck Kleckley, R-Lake Charles, had removed him from the insurance committee. Kleckley assumed the speakership after securing Jindal’s support. “It’s hard to describe the intimidation the governor tries to exert on the Legislature,” Gisclair says. “But it’s there.”
It certainly is. Without a doubt. But there is an upside. Once Jindal & Co. beat a lawmaker down, there’s no way to go but up. Just ask Rep. Dee Richard, a Thibodaux independent who believes Jindal should open up more records from his office to public view, reduce state consulting contracts and cut the public workforce.
Richard spent the past few years offering up policy alternatives to Jindal’s agendas, many of which were supported by lawmakers but never by the governor. As a result, during his first term alone, Richard racked up four vetoes from Jindal.
This year he has House Bill 291, which would place Jindal’s office in the same category as all other state agencies in regard to public records. Under current law, many documents used in the “usual course of duties and business” in Jindal’s office, including intra-office communications, are allowed to remain secret.
Richard’s legislation does provide for a seven-day wait before records of confidential meetings can be released and another 10-year waiting period before all other protected documents can be accessed. “I don’t want the law to be too tight,” Richard says. “I don’t think this is the final version of the bill; I’m willing to work on it. But I think there are a lot of public records that need to be opened up. I do believe there are some things that could be brought out for the public that would help us deliberate on the budget.”
Richard is also pushing House Bill 328, which outlines a plan for trimming government consulting contracts. The plan, first floated by state Treasurer John Kennedy as a member of the now-defunct Commission on Streamlining Government, calls for a 10 percent reduction in professional, personal, consulting and social services contracts under the jurisdiction of the Division of Administration’s Office of Contractual Review.
Kennedy and Richard fought for passage last year and found support from the full House before a Senate committee blocked the proposal. In an earlier interview, Kennedy said he would support the bill during this year’s regular session, and Richard says he expects the treasurer to testify on its behalf.
| “It’s hard to describe the intimidation the governor tries to exert on the Legislature, But it’s there.” —Rep. Truck Gisclair, D-Raceland. |
In opposing the legislation last year, the Jindal administration described the plan as “overly broad.”
Kennedy and Richard have likewise refiled House Bill 327, which would eliminate 15,000 jobs from the executive branch over a three-year period. Jindal’s administration complained last year that the plan would have jeopardized jobs in veterans affairs and corrections.
And just like Richard’s other streamlining legislation, it was approved by the House in 2011 but ran into opposition in the Senate. “I thought it would be a good idea to bring them back,” Richard says of his streamlining bills. “We do have a different Legislature now with several new members.”
Of course, by “new,” Richard means freshmen. But the definition should also include folks like Ritchie who certainly have a new outlook on Louisiana politics — and Jindal.
Jeremy Alford can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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